If they don't, other nations will think it's okay to do what Israel did.
Iran was being the adult in the room.
And Israel actually lost here. Iran spent a couple million on old rockets and drones to Israel.
What it showed Iranian and global intelligence is where and how Israel's defense works. They basically showed their hand to the world.
On top of that, Iran did this all alone. Israel needed the US, UK, and France to defend itself. If Iran uses weapons Israel doesn't know about or gets others involved, it's a crises point.
That's why the US is asking Iran to let Israel hit them to save face.
Yup. I don't know what people really expect and of course twitter accounts were trying to calm people down to not cause panic.
It's very much common knowledge that it's incredibly difficult to intercept ballistic/cruise missiles if countries went at it for real.
Like for volleys of traditional ICBM's between nuclear powers, not even hyper sonics or anything fancy, it's very well understood that most ordinance would not get shot down. Especially with decoys fired with them.
Iran going light exposed that more: no defense against any kind of missile holding a potential nuclear payload is reliable, at all. That's why nobody wants war. It's not about fancy offense, it's about how difficult it is to
defend against the most basic of delivery systems as it is (ICBM's).
A single cruise missile can carry 10 warheads and 40 decoys.
Not to mention a real war would consist of high-altitude detonation causing EMP's to knock down defenses.
Ridiculous and naive to think any of these countries are playing for real yet.